


30 Years

by Fordtato



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Family Member Death, Ford after returning, Gen, Grief/Mourning, He's tired, This world might as well be alien to him, for all it's changed, he's missed so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 22:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15496419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fordtato/pseuds/Fordtato
Summary: He spared a glance over his shoulder, at the hunk of metal that ruined his life, the hunk of metal he had spent the better part of six years creating. It was falling apart, debris draped across the rafters. The end of the world.30 fucking years.— (In which Ford has just come home, but honestly, it might as well be another alien world.) —





	30 Years

He spared a glance over his shoulder, at the hunk of metal that ruined his life, the hunk of metal he had spent the better part of six years creating. It was falling apart, debris draped across the rafters. The end of the world.

It looked empty and stupid, the triangular blight. A bright, useless, and garrish canker on an otherwise damp and dingy space of lab real-estate. A waste of time and money and effort and life — honestly, it’s what he deserved to be left with.

A snow globe filled with a hole in the world burned in his pocket.

**_30 fucking years._ **

It was a stumble and a push that had cost him his life. He had been hanging by a thread, 30 years ago, when he fell through. But Stanley was a hurricane and the lifeline he was gripping never really stood a chance in the face of a force like that.

And maybe Stanley was left with a bitter taste of guilt and a burning weight of a  ~~dead~~  lost brother on his  ~~scarred right~~  shoulder(s), but Ford had been left with 30 years of imprisonment in more open space than he could ever dream of, and even now his return to his own small, small piece of the world felt alien and empty.

He had missed his mother’s funeral, and (less importantly to him, he realized with sharp stab of guilt and harsh indifference) his father’s after that. Mourning was one of those luxuries (like cheese that melted, or close-shaves, or the smell of rain that wasn’t acidic on flowers that didn’t itch to touch) that he hadn’t realized he had to shed when he fell  ~~was pushed~~  into his abrupt and unasked-for travels — wearing the grief now felt ill-deserved, too little too late.

He wore it anyways and it felt like penance.

He had a niece and a nephew, who he didn’t know, who loved him anyways, sleeping soundly upstairs, inevitably confused and invariably perfect (he had recognized that in seconds after being met with handshakes dubbed a full finger friendlier than normal and the girlish scream and attentive stare that felt sadly familiar even through the aftertaste of naivete) and he owed them 12 years of uncle-hood and well-deserved affections that they didn’t even know were ripped from them before they were born and scattered to the winds of the multiverse.

He didn’t know how this world had changed, how the mundanities of the day-to-day for society had evolved, or if they had at all. Ask him a question about the sealife of Earth in dimension 6&-P9C, and he could whip the information out from the depths of his mind like multiplication times tables.  Wanna know how many enzymes were active in the stem cells of the horned platypus-like creature of Ragzarnia in 456-Beta#? Easy to recite as the ingredients of his favorite brand of jellybeans  _ ~~(were they gone too?)~~_

But this world? Right here, right now? Were Siberian tigers extinct? Were Bald Eagles still endangered? Was the mothman still around, and did he finally have that $500? Ford sighed and gripped the table in front of him. He didn’t even know who the president was. How many states were there?  _What month was it?_

It left a sour taste in his mouth and he only had a moment to ruminate on that before realizing he had to throw up and he reached for the wastebasket just barely in the nick of time

(but he would have reached it sooner if it hadn’t been moved from the  **left** of the chair to the  **right**  and  _really **Stanley**  you couldn’t even keep that the same_ — every fucking thing in this  _stupid fucking universe_  just had to change and maybe you couldn’t help that your hair had turned gray,  ** _Stan_** , and that the air felt heavier in the 46‘/ gravity _ ~~that should feel normal it’s YOUR gravity Ford get a hold of yourself it’s your HOME~~_ ,  ** _Stan_** , but in the house he had built that was now a monument of mockery of a life  ~~ended~~  lost 30 years ago, damn well filled with a lot of change that you COULD have helped,  _ **Stan** , for the love of God you couldn’t just keep the wastebasket where it was?_)

His exhaustion hammered at the adrenaline he was still feeling since he first sauntered through the portal, his heart pounding in its cage of resentment and bitterness and ribs broken many times over in dozens of hellscapes across the multiverse.

He was home, but it felt like a joke. The remnants of yesterday’s meal, a wriggling fruit that didn’t exist in the universe, were splattered against the sides of the wastebasket.  _I should grab a sample of that_ , he thinks idly to himself, pulling out a vial and leaning forward.

Behind him, the portal still hummed.

30 fucking years.

 


End file.
